Live to Fly
by Eisenschrott
Summary: Lacking rebels to chase after, Baron Valen Rudor devises a flight exercise modelled after the tactics of a certain Jedi genius pilot at the battle of Coruscant. A certain Sith Lord who also flew in that battle is not amused.
1. Chapter 1

"…And while we floated there on the Impstar, ionized out of our own pants, guess what showed up next?" The tech left the question hanging in the air, glancing over the pilots and fellow mechanics gathered around her. "A-Wings."

The audience erupted in boo's and groans.

That was the patriotic thing to do, thought Valen Rudor. The hint of a smile that flashed on the tech's face, before it regained its theatrical deadpanness, was less so. He didn't say that aloud; competent ground crew was rare merchandise on Lothal, and Tersa Vimy was the best of them all. She cracked the best jokes, too—a talent you begin to appreciate after you get shot down by smugglers, electrocuted by a child thief, beaten up by a hairless Wookiee, and your starfighter prototype gets blown to pieces during a parade; when you limp back into the hangar, you do need a cheer-up.

That also happened to be the case with the visit of a very influent, very negatively impressed Grand Moff first, then of a very influent, very negatively impressed Supreme Fleet Commander, heir apparent to the Empire, and terror of underachievers all across the navy.

So Rudor kept his mouth shut, his arms folded and his back leaning onto the solar array of a TIE fighter, right in front of the technician—as squadron leader, he got the honour seat to the show.

At a waving of Tersa's gloved hand, the voices lowered. On went the tale, "Picture a dead bantha and a pack of womp rats, right? Energy terminals were poppin' off the wall in flames, explosions rocked us so bad one of my teammates ended up flat with his skull knocked open. I held onto the railing and told the main engine below me it'd been a good ride until it lasted. Then nothing happened. Still nothing. More nothing. At last the captain commed from the bridge, said the attackers got vanquished—his very word, _vanquished_—and 'twas business as usual. Now, that dance of death had shaved ten years off my life, but the instant we stumbled back to stations and kicked the power back in, the chrono rebooted from the moment the ion shots had fried the circuits. Guess what, whatever furball had gone on out there in the vac had taken up six minutes square."

_Ohh_ went the pilots. Some whistled.

"And that, gentlebeings," concluded Tersa, "is why my hubby, my kid, my ma and myself owe one to the Black Squadron."

"All right, playtime's over," called Rudor, detaching himself from the fighter. He picked his helmet off the floor, ordered his wingmates on duty roster back to their pre-flight routine controls, and dismissed those just off from the previous shift. The ground crew scattered, some exchanging nods with Tersa.

"I wish I'd been there to see that," Rudor said, and Tersa regarded him with a raised eyebrow. "See that in space and fly into the thick of it, I mean. No offence for the ground crew."

Tersa shrugged in her grey work suit. "I know the feeling, sir. Wasn't always ground crew myself."

Her service record said, Rudor recalled someone telling him at the cantina, she had been a petty officer on some cruiser at the battle of Coruscant. He did recall himself asking, _Did she get medals? Special awards? Distinction notes? Huh. Just as I thought._

"Your assigned craft's maintenance check is green, by the way," she went on. "We installed an 0.2 version of emergency life support for in-flight testing. Ground readings all stay within the norm, but you better never trust an oxygen reserve depletion or a pressurisation shift."

"I'll keep an eye on that," Rudor pointed a finger at her, "but it's your job to make sure I have the lowest odds possible to choke the instant I turn off the suit's life support. Fail that and, nice stories or not, you're getting your bum kicked all the way back to Chandrila. Is that clear?"

Tersa looked back in his eyes, the threat not worth even a shrug. "In your shoes, Commander, I'd worry about death by choking comin' from something that's definitely not a starfighter."

Rudor's jaw dropped. "Then it's true he can do that?" he whispered, before his rational mind could catch up, clamp his mouth shut, straighten his back, slip the mask of cool professionalism back on his face.

"Not that I ever saw it." This time she did shrug. "I'd appreciate it if there weren't a first time at all. So," she unclipped a portable scanner from her utility belt and glanced at the screen, "sensors say cannons are at top performance, but we couldn't test 'em ourselves on long range firing, especially manual mode."

"I'll see to that." He frowned. "Wait, what fool would dream of turning off the targeting comp during ACM?"

"Coupla hotshots I saw flying at Coruscant did that."

"Oh please, there were only clones in the pilot corps back then."

"Must've been some genetic upgrade, or the Kaminoans were into some really hardcore flight training. But I'll tell you this, Commander, I was comm unit petty officer on the _Integrity_ so I damn well know what I'm talking about: tracked these Eta-2 interceptors through their astromechs data feed…"

"The _astromechs_ feed?"

"Told you the pilots had ditched the comp. Neat trick, huh? Then the Seppies showered 'em with buzz droids. One of the astromechs got fried, last thing the feed reported were increasing superficial damages all over the hull—well, I thought, goodbye Insane Pilot Number Two, you tried hard."

"How's this nonsense supposed to make me feel better?" Rudor shook his head and made a start towards his TIE fighter.

"Insane Pilot Number One shot the buzz droids off his wingmate's craft. They lived long enough to crash-land inside the hangar of the _Invisible Hand_."

Rudor halted midstride, balancing on one heavy-booted foot. "What?"

"Inside the hangar, you heard me." Tersa stroked her chin, her gaze lost somewhere on the durasteel vaults of the hangar. "Not sure what happened next, signals were jammed."

Every idiot in the galaxy knew what had happened next—especially every idiot who had to pass strategy exams at Prefsbelt academy, and spent long hours poring over diagrams of the battle of Coruscant.

The buzz droids, however, were a surprise. "Shot them… off his wingmate…"

"Yep. Well, he shot those he couldn't crush. With his own vehicle's wing, y'know, like this." With her hands in grease-stained gloves she mimicked the clash of one wing over the other, in sharp shovelling motions. "It worked. Nasty itty-bitty buggers, buzz droids, but they break easily."

"Sure, like my brain will if I keep listening to you." Rudor put on his helmet with more force than it was necessary—it slammed onto the top of his skull and he felt a bit of pain despite the padded hood of the flight suit. Point proven. He dashed to the TIE fighter, without a look back at the shrug that old hag of a technician was deigning him with.

* * *

Author's note, or: I can't believe I'm venturing into mild technobabble on the aerospace engineering of a fictional universe that makes use of, uhh, _creatively interpreted_ physics anyway.

Pre-Disney EU material was pretty clear on the fact that TIE fighters don't have life support system, which is entirely provided by the pilot's suit. Then here comes _Fire Across the Galaxy_, and a grand totale of three people can not only fit into the cockpit of a TIE, but also do so without wearing anything remotely resembling the necessary gear. Granted, that particular fighter might have received a technical tweaking along with the paint job, but who knows. For the sake of play pretend, this story assumes the primary life support is that of the pilot's suit, backed up by an emergency system (probably running on limited time, i.e. supposed to last long enough to make a run to the safety of the nearest Star Destroyer docking bay) built into the vehicle.


	2. Chapter 2

During the three standard hours of the patrol shift, everything inside the cockpit that was supposed to flash red flashed red. At the set time for the test, Rudor switched on the emergency life support of the vehicle and off that of his suit. The air that blew in from the small pumps reeked of dust and staleness, and it made Rudor cough into his helmet; for a moment, moisture clouded the visors.

"Spark Two to Spark Leader. Sir, is something wrong?" crackled his older wingmate's voice over the comm.

"Neg—negative." One final fit, and he switched the suit's life support back on for good. The helmet filters started up with a barely audible whirr over the roar of the engine.

A whiff of the stench lingered in the recycled air.

He wrinkled his nose. "Emergency life support test failed." A few techs at the Sienar central factory were going to lose their job for that, word of honour.

"Sir, at least the guns work like a charm," said Spark Six in a chipper tone. "Pity we got no one to test 'em on in the proper way, right?"

That made Rudor want to reverse the thrusters, fall behind and let loose another round of green plasma while Spark Six's fighter found itself in his crosshairs. The Empire had no use for idiots, after all…

"Cut the chatter!" he ordered. It was his usual snapping command tone, but it came with a quickened heartbeat and a dry throat.

"Yeah, Nell, clam up," said Spark Seven, "you karking jinx, before you bring the rebels on us."

"Spark Seven, you too…" Rudor was halfway through the other pilot's call sign when Nell—when Spark Six retorted, "Let 'em come! That's what we're here for, to blast the scum to ninth hell—or you joined the navy just for the sight-seeing?"

"All wings stick to mission information or maintain silence," said Rudor, his voice and in-built helmet transmitter dripping outrage at the discipline breakdown.

Perhaps not just outrage. A leak of real homicidal intent, just a streak, but the pack felt it. Over the comm there was low static silence again, and the partly muffled screech of the engine.

Stars, it would be just _this_ easy to splash his wingmates. Too damn easy. Dirt fliers slowed down by atmospheric resistance, air currents, their own lacklustre performance rates.

Damn, here swimming in the goo _he_ would be easy to splash as well. He glared down through the viewport, at the planetary surface that skidded past a few klicks below. Pale grassland, rows of miners' shacks and lean-tos, ferrocrete depots, yawning black pits. Then grassland again, criss-crossed by freeway lanes.

He caught his fingers caressing the laser cannon triggers on the control yokes.

_Get a hold of yourself, rancor pup_, his first flight instructor's wise words for all seasons chimed in his mind. _Save that for the bandits_. A moment later he sighed. There were no bandits, and he felt so bored he was daydreaming during a patrol mission.

A patrol with nothing to watch, since the simultaneous presence of Lord Vader and fresh-off-the-assembly-line AT-DPs had done miracles to disperse unauthorised gatherings of disgruntled citizens. But still a mission.

The comm stirred again with a brief, soft burst of static. The frequency had changed to a ship-to-ship single channel.

"Spark Leader, permission to speak freely, sir?" Over the narrow-band signal Spark Two's voice sounded weak and far-off, though Spark Two was flying in formation just a few dozen metres away from Rudor. And neither the other squad members, nor the fighter control crew back in Capital City, would hear him.

"No décor," said Rudor.

A crackling half-second of silence passed. Rudor could almost see his wingmate wet his lips. Cowardly annoying old fool.

"Little Miss Mass-Murder's got a point, Commander. We all went to flight school; we've all logged more hours in the sim than anywhere else bar the loo; and, once we go out there after _actual_ rebels, it's a slaughterhouse in the sky."

Rudor chuckled. "Of course it is, we're the best of the best in this sector!"

"Commander, with all due respect, _we_ are the ones being slaughtered," said the other pilot's far-off old-man voice, as heavy as lead. "Twenty of 'em—of _us_—over the past couple months, all gunned down by the same ship. I was on patrol with Miollis when she went down; still hear her scream for help in my sleep, sir. We can't go on like this. Not now that the rebs are levelling up, and we might have the whole bloody planet up in arms as Life Day early present. If we lag behind, we're as good as sitting ducks."

Rudor's mouth hung open under the helmet; he considered blurting out his frank opinion of holier-than-thou old men who refused to get soused at the cantina and were only good for dragging drunken squadron leaders back to barracks—unsolicited help, laced with apologies and extra tipping to bartenders who deserved neither for the bantha piss they served, the non-humans they were, and the butthole-of-the-universe planet they'd set up shop on.

"Cyr, for the sake of sparing myself and Spark Squadron the humiliation of a chat with the thought policeman," he said, "I'll pretend the comm's malfunctioning and not a word you said has reached my ears. Copy that?"

"Yessir."

A louder static surge, and the comm tuned back to the op-chan.

"Spark Leader to Spark Squadron," Rudor said. "Form up over-under on me, then maintain course at current speed."

Nell was the only one to answer aloud, in a singsong drawl, "Copy that, sir!"

Rudor gritted his teeth. He imagined targets flashing an inviting red in the middle of the crosshairs, as good as a sitting duck… He forced himself to look at the navicomputer, and didn't like what the sensors lined up behind and beside his TIE. "Spark Four, Spark Seven, you're out of formation!"

"In a sec, sir," said Spark Seven, high-pitched and shaky.

And Cyr had been shocked that a pilot even younger and less experienced had screamed while her fighter went down.

The green dots representing the fighters on the tactical display pulsed and shook to almost collide with one another.

"Watch out!" roared Spark Nine, at the outermost wing of the forward-line formation.

"Sorry," said Spark Four.

Enough was enough. "Listen up, nerfherders," snarled Rudor, "I'm sick and tired of your incompetence. This poodoo is not flying on _my_ watch while Lord Vader in person has got his eyes on us." _If he even has eyes_.

The pilots were silent over the comm. So was the fighter control officer. Listening intently. For some reason, Rudor had always found it easier to do things in front of an audience. Never one to bungle up a manoeuvre in front of the brass. Never been tongue-tied when the instructors at Prefsbelt bombarded the classroom with quickest-right-answer-lives-to-fight-another-day, wrong-answer-gets-KP questions. "You're all in for special drill, as soon as flight ops can find us some spare time."

The fighter control officer promptly spoke up, "That would be three days from now, Spark Leader. You are scheduled for one standard day of rest while Fang Squadron from the _Sovereign_ takes over your patrol duties for their planetside shift. We can easily arrange for a drill."

They were far from the idea of well-trained squadron one forms aboard a Star Destroyer, but at least no one had the gall to grumble.

"Spark Two to Spark Leader."

Rudor rolled his eyes. Come drill day, he was _so_ going to paint Cyr's fighter for a record-breaking number of times.

"Sir, so is this goin' to be a simulated battle?" Cyr's voice over the open channel was confident and clear and sounded several Outer Rim campaigns younger than the man looked.

* * *

Author's note, or: Have I already heard that name in history class perhaps?

...Yes if it was a class with a focus on French Napoleonic military; the real people whose names I've borrowed are General Miollis and Marshal Gouvion-Saint-Cyr.

Pilot lingo courtesy of the short story _Last Call at the Zero Angle_ (_SW Insider_ #156) and the _Essential Guide to Warfare_; the latter is filed under Legends and its content, for my personal taste, is of mixed interest, but the good parts of it are, well, good. Not to mention the illustrations.


	3. Chapter 3

After a debriefing nearly as endless and tedious as the patrolling, then back to his living quarters and the sonic shower and the comfortable lightness of boxers and sleeveless shirt, Rudor sat down at the Holonet terminal built into the flat's wall and tried logging in with his old student's credentials to the Prefsbelt academy databank.

He'd never wondered whether they would deactivate the account after his graduation, and why should have he?, he thought while the Imperial crest icon spun at the centre of the loading screen. It was beneath an officer to concern himself with such crud for librarians…

_Welcome, Cadet Rudor_, flashed the screen.

"Cadet your exhaust port," he muttered.

First thing he noticed was that his personal inbox had around sixty unread new messages. Spam, and _hiya Val, wanna hang out tonight?_ from a few classmates who were crushing on him back in the days. All spam, really.

He navigated into the library service. Manoeuvre and drill schematics were stored in the same old tab, easy to find at the top of the page. The nestled folders opened to endless scrolling and Rudor shivered. A cold tiny room with a military-issue cot, a persistent scent of sweaty undergarments and shaving soap, his own state of undress, the mouse droid skittering up and down the floor and bumping onto his bare feet, all those blasted diagrams on the holoprojector, well into the night after the loudspeakers had blared lights-out… Had anything really changed since his academy days?

He reached for the small refrigerator and felt around for a can of energy drink while he kept scrolling down the exercise diagrams. There wasn't one he didn't know by heart, and his scores in the corresponding field drills—logged at the top of each file in a bold type —if anything, served as a pleasant reminder of his top-grade curriculum… that had landed him on Lothal. _Lothal_. While some idiot who dared call himself his pal because they'd copied answers from his classwork was frolicking on a Star Destroyer within an hour's hyperspace reach from Imperial Centre.

Rudor wished the carbonated swill flushing down his throat contained alcohol, then slammed the empty can flat on the sturdy edge of the projector. No way in hell Grand Moff Tarkin, Lord Vader, and he himself, were going to be impressed with flight school manoeuvres. As if the rebels would be so chivalrous as to stick to the manual and just float there waiting to be painted and shot down, maybe send the Imperial Navy a box of chocolates for the trouble.

He swiped to a database search page of the historical archives, drumming to a pop tune the flattened can on the projector table to block the memories of Galactic Warfare History exams. The academy's collection of battle records was nightmarishly wide, reaching all the way back to Admiral Pradeux's times; the search bar deceitfully inviting, at the top of a blank page that, upon entering the query terms, would fill with so damn many results you'd sooner write the sorting algorithm yourself. Rudor wouldn't have put that past the sadism of the ancient instructors.

He selected the search bar, and his fingers hovered above the keypad. Damn, he wasn't even sure he could type half the names of the obscure systems where this or that long-forgotten battle had been fought…

_Wait._

_Coruscant._

He punched in the system and the date of the battle. Still, that was going to need an awful lot of sorting. What ship was that which Tersa had mentioned—the _Integrity_, yes. He recalled the specs while he typed—_Carrack_-class cruiser, the commander was some fellow named Needa.

Being specific in the tags paid off: only one hundred and ten results. A bit of scrolling and the record showed up on the screen.

It came in a raw video track, and a string of data flashing so fast at the side of the screen that Rudor couldn't read a word or a number. It took him a few pauses and rewinds and some tinkering with the projection speed to get used to the discoloured images, static-ridden and so lurching they almost gave him motion sickness.

By the time the video ran out, his stomach was roiling and his mouth was hanging open and the flattened can had fell off his hand somewhere on the floor.

_Holy mother of moons. _This_ is flying_, the wing commander side of his brain said. Another, hush-hush, _Thank the stars I wasn't old enough to be _there. Sure he'd wished he were, boasted he would have been doing great blasting Separatist clunkers into stardust, had plenty of sim scores to back the claim.

And now… this.

Even with the record slowed down to half the original speed, watching it had felt like riding a BARC speeder at full throttle. Turbolaser blasts flashed in and out, often blinding the camera, uncomfortably close; the pilot barrelled through the barrages as if he could see each one of the plasma bolts and dodge with the ease of a gravball player. Insane. Then there had been torpedoes, and the swarm of buzz droids.

Stars. Clones had balls of durasteel. _Good thing they were being phased out_, piped up again the Valen Rudor who wanted victory but none of the struggle. _With them in the armed forces, there would be no need for proper human recruits. No need for a Baron Rudor flying ace extraordinaire. Goodbye to glory, goodbye to fame._

The record automatically replayed from the start. Rudor planted his elbows on the edge of the projector and massaged the growing throb in his temples. Yes, this was the right thing to impress the high-ups, but adapting it to unshielded TIE fighters would take some creative thinking—oh, how odd, some strings of the data feed were blacked out, probably encrypted to prevent enemy tapping, and they hid away the pilots' designation. Besides, they didn't have buzz droids. A dummy target taped to the fighter would just stand still, and make things too easy—

"Ow! Damn you, little…"

He ducked under the table and caught the mouse droid before it scuttled away. The droid let out a whine-like whirr and its wheels and brushes kept turning frantically.

Rudor got on his feet—well, on the foot that hadn't just gotten a stubbed toe. He studied the mechanisms on the belly of the droid, poked at the brushes and the wheels axles. Then he turned again to the record, just at the moment when one of the buzz droids crawled over.

A grin spread on Rudor's face, and he regaled the mouse droid with it. "Congratulations, little critter, you just got commissioned to the fleet."

The droid screeched and whirled its wheels faster, the way a flesh-and-blood trapped animal would thrash about for dear life.


	4. Chapter 4

Nell treated the rest of Spark Squadron to a smile that would have scared a dianoga out of a sewer. "This is going to be _soooo_ fun."

"It's not supposed to be fun," snapped Rudor, eyeing once more the flight diagram and the deactivated droid on the table, "it's supposed to be a work well done." He looked up at the pilots in service uniform gathered around the holoprojector in the briefing room. "Since we don't have enough dummies to destroy at every pass, we'll take turns: one by one we'll engage, hit one target, and disengage to let the next in. Senior Airman Danthon," he watched Cyr stiffen to attention, "you're carrying the dummies." _Let's see who's as good as a sitting duck now_. Rudor had to bite his cheeks to keep himself from smirking.

The older pilot showed no sign of disappointment, no emotion whatsoever on his tanned clean-shaven face, just nodded and said, "Yes sir." It was almost frustrating.

"I hope I don't need to tell you all again to keep your guns at minimum power."

"Sir, no sir," chorused the cool-voiced reassurances.

"Good. Any questions? Then go and gear up. We'll meet at the hangar in one hour. Dismissed!"

Spark Squadron scuttled out of the door at a quick march, Nell running in the front and Cyr at the rear with his hands in his trousers' pockets. Last one to exit, he stopped a moment to tell the figure in work suit leaning against the door jamb, "Neat work on the mouse droids, Tersa."

"No biggie," the tech replied in a low voice.

"Is anything wrong, Chief Vimy?" Rudor asked, very commander-like, when Cyr was already out of the door but surely still within earshot.

Dirtside crew as she was, Tersa reacted to the sound of authority and walked to him with the straight-backed composure of a former naval officer. "Dummies are triple-checked and bein' loaded onto Danthon's assigned craft this instant. All maintenance checks on your ships are greener than the grass by Lake Sah'ot."

"Excellent. I'll make sure to mention your prepping work in my report."

"But there's one thing I was wonderin', sir."

Rudor crossed his arms and puffed up his chest. "Is it anything that could hamper the drill?"

"I'm a mechanic, sir, an' these things are not my circus and not my momongs, so to speak—'s just, if the thought policeman finds out you're copyin' ideas from a J—"

"Chief Vimy, I forbid you to refer to Imperial Security Bureau personnel in such a disrespectful way." He enjoyed the sight of her mouth hanging open, then shutting. He knew from experience what was roiling under the expressionless face: _angry superior = oh poodoo, I'm toast_. It had been worth enduring years of military schools to become himself the angry superior that others feared. Stars, so worth it. "Credit and responsibility for the success of this drill are my territory, so, as long as you don't have any _strictly technical_ issue belonging to _your_ territory to let me know, consider yourself dismissed and get back to work."

"As you wish, sir." Tersa marched out, in a pleasantly regulated thump of boots. She was already gone and the parade-step noise had waned off down the corridor, when Rudor wondered whether that martial stance had been a veiled mockery.

Rage washed out hot over his cheeks. He almost broke into a run to catch up with her, but a collision of his kneecap against a chair ground him to a pained, softly cursing halt.

Well, damn her. She could forget that praising mention in the after-action report—not that he'd truly meant to write it in the first place, but now there was an objective reason to avoid being so chivalrous; a job well done is the standard that the Imperial fleet demands, so why should a tech be complimented for simply doing her job? The Lothal garrison was filled with enough spoiled buffoons, as far as Rudor was concerned.

Time to kick at least one squadron of those fools into shape.

He tried resting his weight on the offended leg; it didn't hurt anymore and no blood had seeped through the fabric.

Good. Really ready to go.

He switched off the projector, picked up the refitted mouse droid, and strode to change into the flight suit.

#

At three-thousand klicks of altitude, six-hundred fifty klicks per hour of speed, six degrees of external temperature, it was a beautiful day above the Capital City bay.

Spark Squadron got up into the blue about three klicks away from the city waterfront; far enough to stand clear off the spaceport traffic, near enough for whatever brass that might be looking from the windows of the Imperial Complex to follow the manoeuvre. Cyr's fighter, with the dummies scampering on their newly acquired magnetic wheels up and down the hull and the solar arrays, slowed down as much as a TIE could go slow. When it got far, it would veer and return to where the rest of the squadron spread out and hovered to watch.

"Spark Three," Rudor spoke into the comm, "deactivate targeting computer."

"Yessir." After a few seconds Nell muttered, "This feels weird."

"Spark Two, the first pass is coming. Are you ready?"

"Affirmative, sir," replied Cyr, his voice flat and business-like.

"Spark Three, approach and fire."

Nell's TIE broke out of the formation. A red dot on the navicomm shooting out of the cluster first, then the fighter appeared into Rudor's naked eye vision through the viewport. He pushed forward and upwards the control yokes; his fighter accelerated and caught up with Nell's, hovering a dozen metres above her. He could see the hatch at the top of the cockpit. It would have been a clean shot had he opened fire now, even without the targeting comp crosshairs that automatically painted her. Rudor allowed himself a little smile under the helmet.

_But the mission first._

Nell decelerated and her cannons let out a burst. The plasma bolts sailed well over Cyr's fighter, not hitting even one of the dummies.

"Aw, fuck!" snarled Nell.

"Spark Two to Spark Leader. Zero hits." Flat and business-like. Veiled mockery.

"I know!" said Rudor. "Spark Four, you're up next." He veered, still mirroring Nell's movements from a distance, and when she resumed her place in the empty spot at the centre of the formation, Spark Four did not break out at once. "Spark Four, do you copy?"

"Sir, I—my guns are defective, sir."

"Wh—" Rudor bit his tongue; they were on op-chan, flight control was listening, and the stars only knew who else beside the control officer. "What is the problem?"

"I don't know, sir. Power control's stuck and I can't lower it."

"Spark Four, you should have set your cannons to minimum firepower earlier when I gave the order." He found it harder and harder to keep his voice even. "Why didn't you warn me?" He toggled the firepower control himself; the bars obediently raised and lowered on the small green display at the flick of his finger.

"It was working 'til a moment ago, sir. Request permission to return to base, sir." The pilot assigned to the Spark Four craft was one of the kids who'd fouled up the formation a couple days ago. Had Rudor not known it from the duty roster, he could have told by the voice aflutter with fear. "If I tried to shoot, I would—the hit would destroy Spark Two, sir."

"Only if you don't aim well."

"Sir, I can't…!"

The target lay there in the lower left corner of Rudor's viewport, swaying gently in the air currents, the droids crawling like bugs on a leaf and glinting in the sunlight.

_Go. Do it_. He could give him the order. He could give everyone the order to toggle up the firepower, and give Cyr the order to stay still, do not run, do not even eject if—_when_ hit. The Empire does not tolerate failure nor insubordination. Your commander tells you to jump out of an airlock in your underpants, you jump.

"We'll deal with this later at the debriefing, Spark Four."

Perhaps it was just static, but it sounded a lot like a sigh of relief.

"Spark Two, I'm making the next pass myself. Coming in with guns at full power. Do not alter your course."

"Copy that, sir." Still so cool, calm and collected that Rudor suspected Cyr had not copied at all, or didn't believe him.

_Just wait, you sorry bastard._

He pressed the on/off key of the targeting comp. The crosshairs blipped off the display; it did feel weird, like a gaping hole at the centre of the console. But he still had the navicomm, and a very keen eyesight. He trailed after the target, at the nerve-wracking slowness that was necessary to keep safety distance; the engine's familiar howl had sunken to a whirr, like an old creaky fan, and against all the knowledge Rudor had of mechanics, he half-expected it to sputter to a breakdown any moment.

By the lightest tilts of the yokes he ascended, his fingers ready on the triggers. The target was in the lower middle of his viewport now. The dummies had clustered on the left wing, at the crook where it was welded to the hull. _They sense danger… no, kriffing absurd_. Yet, he felt his own muscles taut and his skin hot under the body glove and the suit.

Another tilt, even lighter—_now_.

The guns cried out and the bolts flared, and a fraction of a second later a flame lit up on Cyr's fighter.

Rudor's heart thundered like a second set of turbolasers.

"Spark Two to Spark Leader," growled Cyr, "four dummies down. Good shot, sir."

Rudor flew over him, saw a black tarnish on the wing and the surviving droids scuttling over to the solar array and below the hull.

"Holy Hutt's balls, did you see that?"

"Cut the chatter, Spark Three." Yet, exhilaration rang high-pitched in Rudor's tone. He soared and sped up, grinning at the kick of acceleration, then dove the TIE into a barrel roll as he flew back to the lead of the formation. "Hope you got the point, gents. Now Spark Five, you…"

"Flight control to Spark Squadron," an emotionless female voice crackled over the comm, "abort mission and return to base at once."

_What the bloody hell?_ "Is it an emergency? The rebels?"

"Nothing of the sort, Commander." This was not the flight control officer on duty. The voice was masculine, had a Coruscanti accent, and was so cold it could have ground a nuclear reaction to a halt. "Grand Moff Tarkin is presently holding back Lord Vader from flying over to you and blasting your whole squadron to scrap ore, but who knows how long that will last? I suggest you come back _very_ fast."

"Acknowledged, Agent Kallus." The words rolled in Rudor's mouth with a physical weight and a gut-wrenching bitter taste. He faintly heard the thought policeman tell the flight control officer, "Thank you, Lieutenant, you may resume your duties."

This was not happening.

"Spark Squadron, form up behind me."

This could not be happening. Whatever it was. Not his fault.

There was another crackle of static. Ship-to-ship freq, Spark Two. "Sir, what the sweet kriffing stars was that?"

"Blast me if I know."

He might just do that. Cyr was flying right behind him, according to the formation's scheme and the sensor arrays.

Rudor blinked as sweat drops rolled down his forehead and stung his eyes.

* * *

Author's note, or: Oh no, more references!

Oh yes. Cyr's surname is indeed a thinly tweaked version of Danton, the French revolutionary. "Not my circus, not my momongs" is courtesy of the magnificent Polish expression "nie mój cyrk, nie moje małpy", not my circus not my monkeys. "Thought policeman" comes from _1984_; used as a slur here, I thought it just had that nice ring of distaste for political officers I imagined an Imperial Security Bureau hunting hawk could elicit in some career military people.


	5. Chapter 5

Aboard the ISD _Adjudicator_, the senior wing commander Rudor used to serve under had a trick for times like this: _Concentrate on the moment. Act, don't think. Stick to drill book minutiae. Let your brain go numb. Don't let it think about what happened out there in the black_.

Or about what awaited once Spark Squadron had executed a perfectly synchronised landing in the hangar the flight control cleared them for, and Rudor had taken a few deep breaths before climbing out of the cockpit and down the hoverladder a tech had pushed beside his TIE.

The instant Rudor's boots touched solid ground, the tech leaned over to rub her hand over an insignificant dent on the hull and whispered, "Big guy in black's real mad. Barged in and threw a couple of us across the room."

_Across the room_ meant thirty metres away. Rudor would have told her to shut up, but his throat felt dry and constricted, as if the neck of the flight suit had tightened into a noose.

"Chief Vimy was tryin' to reason with him, then the Moff walked in. I saw 'em leave a few minutes before you got cleared for landing."

"Leave? And what about us, and the mission?"

The tech looked up, flinched, and shoved Rudor aside to push the hoverladder away and be gone.

"Commander."

The tone made Rudor spin on his heels, chin up and back ramrod straight. The alarm that screeched _superior officer_ in his mind went off at once, and he swallowed a groan. Agent Kallus didn't bother walking up the twenty metres or so that separated them; he held up a hand and motioned Rudor to follow.

_Son of a Hutt_. Rudor clenched his helmet tighter under his arm and didn't move, staring the thought policeman dead in the eyes. Which Kallus rolled, with a very visible, almost theatrical sigh.

Rudor's face burned as if he'd been slapped. He stepped towards Kallus, sticking his right fist inside his helmet and balling up his fist; no one ever expected a TIE pilot's helmet to knock so hard on their teeth—the secret of Imperial bar fights that nobody ever seemed to learn. But the bastard just turned and walked. Hands clasped behind his back, a pace that the back of Rudor's mind recognised as the standard parade-ground quick step march. Rudor had to run to catch up with him.

"Wait, you—" He grabbed Kallus by the crook of his right arm, feeling muscles so hard under the sleeve that he wondered, was it a prosthesis, a droid arm?

Kallus shot Rudor the quickest sideways glance. "If you value your life, shut up and don't fall behind."

"What the hell is going on? Why did you make me cancel the drill?"

"_I_ didn't, I told you." Kallus turned abruptly towards a doorway, bumping against Rudor as if the latter were invisible.

No, not invisible. Irrelevant.

Rudor cast a look over his shoulder and caught a sight of some of his wingmates, staring back from a safety distance and the ready cover of the docked fighters' solar arrays. Taking in the image of their commander being treated like an unruly child by the thought policeman.

Rudor slowed down behind Kallus, straightened his back and hoped his subordinates were seeing, taking due notice of his renewed composure.

"Here, Commander."

They halted in front of a service turbolift, that Rudor knew led to the tactical rooms a dozen levels above. Kallus pressed the opening button and they entered the elevator at the same time, bumping shoulder to shoulder with each other. A sparkle of tight-knit-brow irritation passed on the thought policeman's face.

Rudor planted his free hand on his hip. "You didn't call this shot, fine. But you do know why Lord Vader seems to have taken issue with me, don't you?"

The door slid closed and the elevator started its ascent. Kallus' eyes darted to the ceiling, the walls, the four corners of the cubicle. Well, embarrassment served the bastard right...

"What even possessed you to reenact a Jedi pilot's stunt?"

"A—what?"

Kallus cocked an eyebrow. "It was right there in the record you accessed and attached to the flight plan. Which you left logged into the projector in tactical room B13."

"_That_ is standard procedure!" Rudor barely realised the lift had stopped and the door was sliding open, but Kallus turned, ignored him. Rudor raised his voice, "All Esk-level security mission plans must be registered into—"

Something clattered at the end of the corridor ahead of them. It bounced off the wall and lay on the floor in a smoking heap of mechanic parts and torn wires, in front of the tactical room's open door. The holoprojector.

The hair stood on the back of Rudor's head, and he ran his free hand over the life support control plate on his chest, before reminding himself he was not in the vac, this couldn't be _that_ outer-space cold that bites deep into your bones the first time you fly into the black, although it bloody felt exactly like it. Some idiot must have set the air conditioner to too low a temperature.

"Vader, that equipment is in short supply here!" snapped a voice from inside the room, and it went on to condemn something Rudor couldn't hear. The voice was chilly with authority, male, middle-aged. _The Grand Moff. Execution at lightsaber-point. Taskmaster Grint and Commander Aresko got filleted like groat chops_, that was how the rumour mill had put it.

Rudor's hand was shaking. He stood frozen in the middle of the aisle, staring at the crushed projector. Who would even have enough force to rip it clear off the table and fling it across the room? That Pau'an Inquisitor had creeped the living hell out of everyone in the garrison, but you could pretend he was a tattooed human or something like that. Lord Vader instead was a boosted droideka, a new-model General Grievous. _Just look at those sizzling wires_. And was it a dent in the wall where the projector had impacted it?

"Move along." Kallus was at his side, so close he'd spoken into his ear. He pinched his arm in a grip that made Rudor yelp through gritted teeth, and pulled him towards the tactical room.

Hard voices, arguing; a noise like the hiss of a thermal exhaust port. A stench of charred metal drifted from the projector, then Rudor was shoved first past the threshold.

The window was as wide as the entire wall and it faced the open sea, so the two figures in front of it stood out in an even starker contrast: Tarkin in a neatly ironed uniform, arms crossed, head raised with a haughty expression to glare the masked face in the photoreceptors; Vader as massive as an obsidian statue, complete with the raised arm that an old conqueror made into monument might wave at fame and glory—whereas Vader was holding up by the neck, thirty centimetres off the floor with no apparent effort, a writhing, hand-clawing, leg-thrashing form in a mechanic's suit.

Tarkin broke off whatever he was telling Vader and turned. "Ah, there he is, General Skywalker's impersonator."

Rudor frowned at Kallus, then forced himself not to look back and see if someone else had entered. He stood on attention, wetted his lips and managed not to stammer, "Sir, with all due respect, I have no idea what you're talking about."

"How did you find that record, Commander Rudor?"

He blinked. "In—in the historical archives of the Prefsbelt Academy, sir. My old credentials were still active, I had no idea it was forbidden, sir..."

"Do not try to be clever," boomed a deep droid's voice, the sound wave of which made Rudor stagger half a step backwards, and only military training kept him from cowering. It took him a moment to realise it had been Vader to speak; it left a sort of low buzzing tinnitus in Rudor's ears, or maybe it was just the drumming of his heartbeat.

"My lord, I—" He cried out as the buzz grew into a roar. Pain split his ears, and an ice-cold surge shot through the inside of his skull. Something solid, hard and sharp, sank into his brain, down and down to chafe against the bone—he even _heard_ the scrape, heard it come from within his head.

He tore the padded hood of his flight suit off his skull, distantly aware of the thud of his helmet on the floor—_property of the Empire_—and of voices around him, of a force that wasn't his own muscles holding him up on his feet. Images flashed before his eyes, suffused in a stinging bright light like staring at a star without protective screens—faces, reports, diagrams, a TIE cockpit, things he'd listened or said or just _thought_, not words but only waves of emotion. They washed over him at the speed of a starfighter, one discarded after the other in a burst of electricity he couldn't hear himself screaming at. Too fast to be natural. His memories were flipped through as if they were pages of a book. Flipped angrily, in a rush to find something...

Then there was the daylit tactical room again. The polished concrete floor at least, with his fallen helmet at his feet. He blinked and waited, bracing himself—the room remained. The claws retreated from his brain, leaving him with throbbing temples and a heartbeat so quickened it made it hard to breathe.

"He knows nothing," boomed Vader's droid-voice.

"Just as expected," said Grand Moff Tarkin in a bored tone. "You might not want to kill _him_, at least, unless _you_ are going to take the outraged calls from Sienar and those pesky Corulag nobles."

_Sorry?_, Rudor tried to say, but his throat was dry and he broke into a cough. He slumped against his support beam—which turned out to be an ISB field uniform, a strong arm under the sleeve, and the vague smell of blaster fumes that forever sticks to those who spend many hours at the shooting range.

"They can find a replacement any time. Being an officer, he must be the first to know how expendable he is."

"All in due time, Vader."

Tarkin said something else, but Rudor didn't hear it over the noise of a whimper, strangled and—Rudor's stomach churned at the recognition—feminine. Tersa. He steadied himself out of Kallus' grip and turned.

Tersa was struggling to pry Vader's fist off her neck with one hand, and kept herself hauled up with the other to avoid the hanged man's end, the arm wrapped around Vader's without the monster even noticing, as he was carrying on his quarrel with Tarkin, "...while you allowed a sympathiser of the Jedi to serve here."

"If this were the case, my presence on Lola Sayu should have marked a death sentence for me long ago."

Rudor couldn't have picked what was the most uncanny thing: the monster himself with his helpless squirming prey, or the nonchalance with which the rightful human treated the monster.

Vader fell silent for a few long, unnervingly even-regulated breathing hisses. Then he whipped his head about to face Tersa, as if she'd just called his mother a Hutt. He bent his arm and pulled her so close her forehead almost knocked on his helmet. "So, Chief Petty Officer Vimy, you are familiar with that mission, too."

Rudor frowned and he must have been mouthing his feelings of _what in the kriffing stars?_, for Kallus elbowed him in the ribs to signal silence.

In the meantime, Tersa narrowed her eyes and curled her lips. A different kind of horror. "Gotta be shittin' me... Red... Five..."

The noise that next came was a nauseating snap, bones cracked like dry branches under one's boots.

Rudor forced himself not to look away. He kept his eyes wide open, his jaw clenched. Watched the body sag, all but her hand latched onto Vader's arm, then drop to the floor as Vader let go of her—of _it_, the corpse.

The stars only knew how long he would have stood there, staring at it, had the cold steel claws not nudged at his mind again. He bent over to grab his helmet, _would it help if I begged for mercy on my knees?_, and rose again to a shaky-legged attention stance.

"You are dismissed, Commander Rudor, Agent Kallus." A hint of a smile showed up on Tarkin's face. "On your way out, send someone to dispose of the garbage in the corridor and here."

"Yes sir," Kallus and Rudor answered at once, the former loud and eager and the latter with little better than a squeak, wheeled about-face and made for the exit. Rudor didn't dare turning, but he still felt Kallus' hand on his arm. A gentle pressure. _You alright? Can walk? Am behind you if you fall_. The way Cyr did sometimes, when he'd been drinking too much and the walk back to barracks wound through dark streets late at night.

"We must inform the academy archivists at Prefsbelt," Vader went on, "they have sensitive material in their databanks to clear..."

The door slid closed.

#

Kallus had a lot more clemency than the rumour mill ever credited him for. He made no comment on what had happened, took it upon himself to comm for a janitor—"Make sure they bring a body bag"—and his ride on the turbolift ended one level below, leaving Rudor alone.

Out of reflex Rudor punched in a code on the keypad. The door at last opened to reveal the same corridor that led to the hangar bay he'd started from. Other doors gave onto the corridor, storerooms and workshops and a 'fresher; he limped there, held on to a sink and as soon as the water began running he shoved his head under the cold flow.

When the water ran out, he slowly looked up to the mirror above the sink. He watched the youthful face in front of him bite hard into the upper lip, the twitching eyelids, the sticky mess of wet short brown hair.

_General Skywalker's impersonator._

_What possessed you to reenact a Jedi pilot?_

He slammed a fist against the mirror. The drunken-pilot-proof transparisteel didn't take a chink.

How was he supposed to know it was illegal? It was just flying. It was what he lived to do, nothing but flying. Just a drill. His job. For the Empire. Fucking technician. Fucking old people who had fought in the Clone Wars. They'd ruined the galaxy and kept ruining it for the young, for the people like him that owned it by right. Stars, what if it turned out Tersa had been a Rebel sympathiser? If it had been a plan all along to discredit him, the best pilot on Lothal, a perfect target...?

"Hey, Commander?"

He gasped and jumped away from the sink.

Nell stood on the doorway, still clad in her flight suit and with the red mohawk at the top of her clean-shaven head tousled into the helmet's shape. "I tried to comm you but you didn't answer, so... well, kriff, I had to ask the thought policeman—swear I didn't tell him anything yet though—Cyr's gone." She mistook Rudor's silence for something else. "Uh, Senior Airman Danthon, I mean."

"Gone?"

Her eyes darted to the ceiling, the walls, the row of closed stall doors. She shook her head. "Fuck it, let 'em hear if they want to. Yessir, gone. We just saw this fighter rev up and fly out, could tell it was him 'cos it had the mouse droids still attached, and no one lifted a finger 'cos he had all the clearance codes and flight control just... just..." Nell exhaled an angry sigh and shrugged. "He deactivated all tracking devices, comm, navicomp, everything."

So this was how desertion worked. You walked away. When you'd made it past the first corner of the street, you broke into a run. Rudor imagined himself pushing Nell aside, striding to the main door of the Imperial Complex, waiting at the traffic light for the green sign...

He felt his body slouch, his hip bump against the edge of the sink.

Mother of moons, why did it have to happen on his watch? All of it, all the blame on him. The Empire tolerates no failure. The Empire decides _you_ are a failure, Lord Vader crushes your windpipe.

"Commander, you're pale as a ghost." Nell snatched a comlink off her belt. "Sickbay, this is LS-617. I request assistance—"

Rudor pried the comlink from her hand. "Never mind, sickbay, false alarm." He switched it off and dropped it back onto Nell's palm. She stared at him, stiff with the fear that had finally managed to seam her big mouth shut.

"Is there any other ongoing disaster I should know of, Airman Andrashi?"

"The—the ground crew wanted to know if Chief Vimy's dead, sir."

Rudor answered with one nod.

"...Lord Vader?" A whisper, almost reverent.

"Go back to the hangar. I want Spark Squadron ready to take off at any minute, should they send us after Dant—after the deserter."

She blinked. Her eyes brightened and for a moment Rudor feared she would cry. Instead she hissed a vicious-sounding word in what must be her homeworld tongue. "Commander, I'm not shooting him down if we get to bumping. Unless it's a clear order. I'm a bad soldier but not _that_ kind of bad."

"If it comes to a dogfight, you _will_ shoot him down. It _is_ an order."

"As you wish, Commander." She saluted, spun on her heels and exited.

_As you wish_. It was not a matter of wishing. It was how things were, it was what you were supposed to do to traitors, it was what every officer would have said, it was war. Yet, Little Miss Mass Murder had found a way to dump the responsibility on his lap—something mass murderers are damn good at doing. His suit felt like it had grown a lead lining, or the planetary gravity had tripled.

Rudor allowed himself to shuffle his feet as he ambled down the corridor, until the instant he clamped the helmet back on his head and stepped into the hangar again.

A few mechanics stood gathered 'round the technician he had met earlier. As he passed, he caught a scrap of the rumour mill memorial service, "And while this dumbass stormtrooper asks me if it was an explosion, Chief Vimy up an' goes to the big guy in black and says..."

* * *

Author's note, or: Thank you for choosing our airline!

The Empire is all about teaching its minions the deeper meaning of expendability, isn't it? Not much to say in terms of geeky references, for once: I've operated under the assumption that Rudor's homeworld does have a nobility, given the presence in the new EU of a Baron Lero Danthe from Corulag; and, I guess it's time I stop forgetting to mention it, the fic's title comes from _Aces High_ by Iron Maiden.

My heartfelt gratitude goes to everyone who read, faved, followed, reviewed, stumbled upon this story; your open support and your unfathomable lurking have meant a lot to me.


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